Category: Tutorial

For some reason, this is way harder than it should be. I thought I would be able to find a simple ‘pdf stitcher’ software in the Software Centre and just put them in there, arrange them and then export to PDF – with a password. I think this used to be possible with PDF Sam but anyway. This tutorial will hopefully be a long term and reliable way that we can do this in a pinch from any machine.

This is all terminal based so get ready to pump up your terminal skills.

1. Stick PDFs in a Dedicated Folder

Assemble into one directory all the PDFs you plan to stitch together and wrap up with a password. I think the command will only work if they are in one place so this step is important.

2. Install PDFTK

sudo apt install pdftk… I think… but you might need some other package these days… remind me in comments if this is wrong đź™‚

3. Go to your PDF directory

Using the CD (change directory) command, navigate to the directory you made in step 1.

4. Run the Command for One Page Only.

This is the basic format for PDFTk showing one file being output with a new name and a password

pdftk [mydoc_old].pdf output [mydoc_new].pdf user_pw [awesomepasswd]

In this case you”ll swap out the filenames accordingly.

*Special note! do not put the square brackets in there. those are just to show you what needs to be swapped out. I actually did this and wasted a lot of time (lol)

Also, take note of this, you ‘might’ get a warning that the PDF has a user password and you can’t do these tasks because you don’t know the owner password. It seems banks do this on their bank statements, which is funny, because they don’t supply a secure way to send banking documents to them and ask me to emailâ€¦

Error will look like this if you need to work around it:

filename.pdf
has set an owner password (which is not required to handle this PDF).
You did not supply this password. Please respect any copyright.

I found a nice work around to stick it to these bankers which is to use the Ubuntu ‘print’ (ie. printing to your printer) and then change from your printer to ‘print to file’. Side note: If you didn’t know about this built in and super easy PDF feature and you only need to do one PDF at a time and no encryption, this is the way to do it.

The output PDF from this method seems to strip away any of the ‘owner password’ annyoyances. Hint: this is also a good time to rename your individual pdfs to a number in the order you want them to appear in the final merged PDF. I do 001, 002, 003 during this phase making the next section way, way easier.

5. Run the Command for Merging Multiple PDFs

The process is the same as above, but now that you have your folder full of 001, 002, 003 numbered files, here is what you do:

Looking for some extra security, privacy and anonymity whens sending files? This might be a neat solution for you.

Currently it seems the instructions for using this interesting Onionshare technology are not super clear so I’m writing up a quick tutorial so others can save a few minutes and set their expectations correctly.

First, how it works is this:

You have to use a command line tool for now

Onionshare does a bunch of fancy stuff to your file and turns it into a shareable link

The person on the other side gets the files by entering that link into a tor browser (not a regular browser – won’t work)

You get a .zip file, not the raw file which you download to your local device and extract

It seems you only get one chance and if you don’t get the files, the link dies and the sender has to start again.

1. Install Onionshare.

2. Install Tor browser

I used the Ubuntu Software centre. Probably there are other ways to get it.

3. Convert your file into a shareable and anonymous link

In the terminal, go to where your file is with the CD command and then type:onionshare filename.txt
Where filename.txt is whatever file it is you are trying to share.

4. Copy Link to clipboard

If you haven’t used a terminal for copying before you’ll need to do control + shift + C (not just control + c)

5. Have sender open link in Tor browser

In this case it’s probably you for the first test so paste the link into the Tor browser.

6. Download the file(s)

It seems you only get one shot and that it won’t download raw file but only compressed package. Also if you aren’t familiar with Tor, I lost some precious time here as well looking on my computer for the file but it downloads into a ‘tor folder’ it seems so use the browser to go find your file in case it didn’t end up where you expectedâ€¦what I did was find it, and then control + X it to my local machine from there to do the next steps.

7. Extract and Enjoy

Worked for me!

One-Shot Sharing

Try now to click the download files button again. You will see it’s dead.
Try also to use the same share link again. You will see this also is dead.
Kind of cool.

Sending more than one File at Once

So, after sending one file, I tried again to send an entire directory containing a screenshot, a PDF and a music file just to see what happened. I then tried to do the exact command with a regular directory to see if this would be able to handle it but no go. Onionshare appears not to be able to do this. It failed and couldn’t open the end zip file. For the second test I compressed the directory first as a .zip, then sent that via the instructions above and â€¦ still no go. When I try to extract it fails.

So it may currently only be able to send single files, but definitely single files work well with these instructions above and if you figured out how to send a directory, throw that in the comments below.

This post is a follow-up post to my original where I successfully flashed OpenWRT onto these Zsun devices. Be sure to see that post first if you haven’t already flashed OpenWRT onto the device.

Note that this tutorial should also work for any device upon which you can put OpenWRT (ie any compatible old router you have kicking around).

With this project, what I was really trying to do was create a legitimate ‘mesh network’ but my skills and time ran out so I resolved to have a ‘half victory’ which was to be able to use these little devices to expand our home wifi with small size footprint and lower energy usage, even if it was just on demand, as needed. For example, if I needed wifi to reach outside while gardening so I could listen to streamed music, etc, I could plug one of these in nearby and extend the range instantly.

Before beginning, it’s important to note that this process may need your critical thinking to build on what I’ve done, and if you have further progress, it would be appreciated by all to know, if you could write them in the comments. For full disclosure I fried two Zsun devices while learning so make sure to heed my advice in the other blog if you are using this device.

Oh, one last useful statement: I recommend turning off the wifi in your master-router so that you (you) don’t get confused by which wifi radio device you are connecting to since both devices will, by the end of the tuturial, be sharing the exact same SSID. It reduces confusion and headaches to turn this off (just the wifi, you can use wired connection if you have access). Also, while you are turning it off, take note as to what channel it is broadcasting on since you will want to choose a new channel that is far away from this one on the new device.

Ok, let’s get started.

Setting up the Device as an Access Point

For full credit I pulled the methods for this process from this video, but the video wasn’t super helpful because it required an internet connection to do the changes and I needed a static page with text instructions! These are those:

Step 1: Set up the Interface

If you have any other interfaces besides ‘LAN’, remove them as they won’t be used

Edit the LAN

Change the IPv4 field to the static IP address that this device will have on your main home network.
If your main router is 192.168.1.1 for example, then you could set this to 192.168.1.5 if it’s available. If not, find one that is and set it. And don’t lose it! You will need it to log back into the router after making the change.

In the “DHCP Server” settings below on the same page, there is a checkbox called ‘ignore interface’. Check that box which will disable DHCP (the thing that sends out IP addresses to all your devices) since you won’t need it

“Save and Apply’ button at the bottom

Reminder note: your device will no longer be found at 192.168.1.1 if that’s where you just logged in. It will now be accessible at the address you chose in step 4 above. I always forget this one, ha. Go find it and log back inâ€¦

Step 2: Disable the Firewall

Go to ‘System’ and then ‘Startup’

Scroll down until you see ‘firewall’

Disable it by clicking on the ‘enabled’ button

‘Submit’ button

Step 3: Adjust the Wifi settings

Go to ‘Network’ then ‘wifi’

Edit the active wifi entry

Change the channel (1 to 11) of the device to one that is fairy far away from that of your main router so there is a nice gap between the frequencies

In ‘Interface Configuration’ section, change the mode to ‘access point’if it isn’t already

change the SSID to exactly the same one as your main router (if it’s slightly different it won’t work)

Change the WPA2/psk password to exactly the same one as your main router is outputting. If you don’t it won’t work

‘Save & Apply’ button

Some Follow up Notes

As hinted at at the very beginning of this tutorial, from this point on you will not (or may not?) be able to access your subservient device while the wifi of the master router is on. The reason for this is because probably your computer will find the master router’s wifi device and connect to that. I had big struggles trying to find this device again. If you need to access it, either unplug your master router (honestly this is the easiest way if no one will be angry at you for killing their internet) or go into the master router’s settings and disable the wifi transmit. For me, I recommend turning off the master router’s wifi transmit until it’s all setup on the subservient first.

I had quite a bit of problems, even though my master router wasn’t transmitting wifi, connecting to my newly-IP’d subservient device. After I cleared my browsers cache it did re-appear but I’m not sure that’s why. You might need to mess around with your browser to be able to hit the admin page again. I think my problem might be because I have multiple devices running OpenWRT and the browser gets confusedâ€¦

Background

EDIT JAN 7, 2019Warning! Before beginning this tutorial, note that I have **fried** two Zsun devices nearly immediately after doing these steps. My theory appears to be correct that as soon as you flash to OpenWRT the default power output is way, way too high and so it starts heating up and frying it. Within about 15 minutes of flashing both devices were dead and inaccessible – their SSID didn’t even show up. I am now testing another one where I dropped the power to low and it’s still alive after about 45 minutes. Therefore pay special attention I’m going to test another one now, but in case you find this blog today, you might want to wait a few days for my findings….

I found a lot of pages on the internet showing that it’s possible to flash OpenWRT onto a Zsun Smart Card Reader. A friend gave me a couple and I wanted to try some mesh network ideas. However, for some reason I couldn’t find everything in one spot for Ubuntu, so I’m writing this guide for anyone else who might want to try. There was also a significant bug I encountered which I overcame which might help you if you have tried and failed in the past.

I also recommend staying fully disconnected from your home wifi while you are doing this to avoid confusion. If you have access to an ethernet cable and router this will make things a bit more simple.

What You Will Need

Zsun Reader

micro SD card to insert into reader – BONUS! I just discovered you only need this for the flashing process and then can remove and use again for flashing other devices (microSD not required to function as extender!)

Ubuntu machine with understanding of how to open a Terminal

(optional) A dedicated folder/directory on your computer where you can ‘do all your actions’. I find this reduces risks and helps you keep your files in one place. You can even download this blog to PDF and put it in the same folder.

All the stuff you need in one place on local machine (because your internet will go down while flashing)

Step 1: Download to local machine the File you will need to flash onto the Zsun

I found it really hard to find the file on this page. Here is a direct link to the file and save this in a memorable location on your computer as we’ll need to access it soon.

Step 2: Make sure your micro SD card is formatted to FAT32

On ubuntu you can do this by pressing the super key, typing ‘disk’and using the disk utility. Note – always unplug all external drives you do not want to accidentally kill! Also pay super-special attention you are not accidentally formatting your own computer’s hard drive (I’ve done this hard life lesson and you don’t want it)

Step 5: Connect the Zsun to your WIFI network

This is funny because I totally missed this step and (obviously) it has to be connected to the network in order for it to show up in network and be able to access the admin page. I had an attempted connection which failed and then the second time it connected. You connect to it like any wifi network but it won’t ask for a password.

Step 6: Make Card Accessible to Admin

I ‘guess’ that this step in one of the tutorials I read preps the card to be able to access via Samba. Not sure, I could not access the files on the card until I performed this step so let’s do that now. In a browser, copy/paste this:

Note: if you get ‘connection refused’ message in the next step you may have to re-try this command a few times. Make sure you are actually connected by wifi to device. One time I had to do a full computer reboot too and then it seemed to work.

Step 7: Access the Zsun via Samba (SMB)

(reminder this is an Ubuntu tutorial so you might have to do it a different way on your machine if it isn’t the same)

The super painful part of this tutorial for me is that this easy part was subject to a weird Ubuntu bug that tracks back nearly 10 years. If you are bored you can read about it here, but probably, like me, you just want to hack this zsun and then put evertyhing back the way it was. So let’s do that:

Step 8: Overcoming the Ubuntu Samba Username password bug

in a terminal enter this:sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

Scroll down into the ‘Authentification’ section.

at the very bottom in the space just above the “Domains” section, paste in (with control shift paste) this:

security = userclient use spnego = no

ctrl x to get out

ctrl y to agree to write the changes

Step 9: Continue with Tutorial and Accesss the Zsun via Samba

Open Nautilus (called ‘Files’ on the launcher) (the file cabinet icon thingâ€¦)

Go to ‘Other locations’ on the left menu at the bottom. A ‘Enter server address’ field will appear.

Type in zsun address as follows: smb://10.168.168.1

enter admin/admin pass/user (don’t worry about ‘workgroup’)

when greeted with ‘public’ enter that directory

hit ‘contrl h’ on your keyboard which will show hidden folders. If you don’t do this step you might not think the next step will work since it’s a hidden folder.

You should see ‘trash~’ something. But if you don’t… whatever. Seems to work if it’s fully blank too… Here is where you create the following folder (with the dot/period in front):.update if it doesn’t appear after creating this folder, review step 6 aboveâ€¦

Drag and drop the file you downloaded way above (SD100-openwrt.tar.gz) into this new .update folder. Yes, the whole tar file, don’t extract it.

CRITICAL STEP! Before doing step 10, make sure you skip ahead, and deeply familiarize yourself with the steps following it because you will have a short time to do those steps before the device fries and dies. Once you have read it all (especially big step 11 below) then come back here and execute step 10.

After you are sure that the file is done copying in, go to a browser and enter this:

Wait for long LED flash, then multiple fast flashes – now OpenWRT is booting for the first time.
There will be a long period of (normal slow) flashing, then one long flash, then a whole bunch of very fast flashes. The ZSun Wifi network disappears, and eventually re-appears as OpenWRT.

What he didn’t add that I discovered was when everything is totally done it will be a solid light colour.

SUPER IMPORTANT NOTE (in case you missed my other 20 warnings…) immediately as quickly as possible and reduce transmission power on device! Learn how to do this in Big Step 11 below …if it’s not too late.

Step 10: Log into your new OpenWRT Mini Router!

I have another OpenWRT router going in my house so right away I’m going to log into the new little guy here and change it’s IP address to something different to make sure they don’t conflict. The default OpenWRT is 192.168.1.1 so we’ll access it there now.

You’ll get a browser warning that it’s not secure. No problem, add exception, move forward.

You’ll be greeted with a log in screen with no password set.

Log in.

Step 11: Turn Down Radio Transmission Power to Prevent Deep Fried Zsun!

IMMEDIATELY reduce the transmission power of the device. The default is set to the maximum power and it will fry/kill this device in less than 10 minutes after you flash it. I lost two devices this way so act quickly as follows:

1. Go to network

2. go to ‘wifi’

3. click ‘edit’ on the ‘OpenWRT’ entry

4. Drop transmit power to 4 (lowest)

5. ‘save and apply’ button at the bottom

This will momentarily disconnect you from the device while it makes these settings. From here, assuming my theory above is true, you can start doing other things now such as resetting your device access password:

Go to ‘system’ and ‘system administration’ and create a new user/password

Step 12: Undo whatever we did to that Samba bug above (If you want)

Remember when we fixed that Samba bug above? I’m frankly not sure if that was a secure thing to do so let’s undo it in your computer just in case by going back in the same way, deleting those lines you added, and then saving.

Step 13: Remove microSD

As mentioned above, the microSD is no longer required if you are just using device as a wifi range extender (see this tutorial). You can unplug, remove microSD and plug it in now.

What a pain in the hindquarters… I lost about 2 hours of my life after I plugged in a Samsung 40″ monitor after having been using a Samsung 20″ Monitor. When I went back to my 20″ in my office, Ubuntu (I’m using Gnome currently until Unity8 is ready) my laptop continued to falsely detect the monitor as a 40″ still . The result was a bad display of the wrong size. I could not adjust the settings, nor save any changes, etc, etc.

Thankfully, a friend in the UBports community (awesome, awesome community and project by the way) just saved my day, and what was most nice (is that English?) is that it took less than 30 seconds to fix.

So, if you want to erase or delete or get rid of some false monitor detection in your ubuntu machine, this might also help you đź™‚

Note before beginning: The monitor may/will still display as the wrong size/name but it will work as it should regardless of the name it has in the display settings.

Open a Terminal

Enter this command rm .config/monitors.xml

Press enter (of course)

Reboot

Enjoy your life again

PS – After searching for hours and blogging this someone did point out that there was an official page with this solution, but yeah. If you don’t find it hopefully this blog will help solution be found.

5. Enjoy your newly built bridge

Ubuntu Touch is awesome. Nextcloud is also awesome. Put them together and you have awesome… squared. How cool would it be to have your photos automatically sync to your own Nextcloud sever? Well, you can do it today and here is how.

EDIT DEC 24, 2018 – Important Security Warning before beginning! Currently as of the time of this post, UBsync is not very secure. The volunteers who forked it are not security experts and the password file is not secure and is in plain text. Therefore, be warned that if your content is of extremely private nature, do not use this blog contents until the app has been properly updated.

However, if you are just trying to move your selfies from your phone to your Nextcloud for safe-keeping, this blog will suffice and hopefully in the next little while we’ll have some helpers in the project to improve the way the password is handed.

Also, there is a way to mitigate some risk so that at least your main NC user/password cannot be high jacked. When you log in to your Nextcloud user settings through a browser and go to ‘Security’ and ‘Create new app password’. Be sure to save this password right away during creation and in a safe place because you can only see the password one time (you can’t come back and see it again).

Once you have this password ready, continue with the blog.

Make sure that you have a user account and password from a Nextcloud server. If you don’t have a nextcloud user account, consider strongly hosting your own. You can do this on an unused computer, or using Nextcloudpi on a Raspberry pi, or host a more ‘serious server’.

Select ‘Nextcloud’ Note: If you try to add an account and it doesn’t respond and take you to the next step, you may need to reboot your device.

Enter your Nextcloud credentials (from the ‘new app password’ you created at the very beginning)

Open UBsync App on your Ubunt Touch device

Select ‘Add a New Account’

Select ‘allow’ if the prompt is showing the correct username with the correct server address

Go back to ‘General Settings’ screen of UBsync

Set your sync frequency.

Select any other changes you want on this page.

Go back another screen with the back button top left

Select the folders on your device that you want to sync to your Nextcloud with the ‘Sync Folders’ option. The default option will put your Ubuntu Touch photos (unedited) into the /photos directory (which is a default directory when Nextcloud creates a new account) from the following Ubuntu Touch directory

Default: /Pictures/com.ubuntu.camera/.original

Add a new folder with the + plus sign on the top right.
Select the directory on your UT device you want to sync. NOTE: This is the tricky part, the big ‘tick’ check mark in the center of the screen is not ‘touchable’ but is trying to direct you to hit the ‘tick’ in the top right menu!

Do the same actions for the remote folder.
If the Folder doesn’t exist you can create a new one easily by just typing it. After creating it, touch it again and hit the ‘tick’ in the top right to make it real.

When complete, press the back arrow at top left of ‘sync settings’ title.

Start the sync
Select ‘sync service’ and then the green ‘sync’ button. NOTE: Make sure you are on wifi if you allowed your settings to use both cell phone data and wifi as the sync could be pretty big, especially the first one while it pulls the files from your phone and moves them to nextcloud.

OpenWRT project is awesome for sure. It’s free software (open source) and it allows you to use your router the way you want, unlike how they usually come out of the box. That said, there doesn’t appear to be a super vibrant community around it (yet) so some stuff is pretty hard to do. I’ve created an OpenWRT English-speaking Telegram Group (for now) in hopes this might help some more community building.

Anyway, here is what you came to this blog for: Making the DDNS service work in your OpenWRT router – in my case, specifically, this is a Dlink DIR-615 router and I’m working with No-ip.com so you may need to adjust a bit according to your service. But if you have NO-IP or haven’t started yet, then maybe just use No-IP?

Let’s do it.

Get your OpenWRT router setup with OpenWRT. If you happen to have a Dlink DIR-615 – bonus! Here is my blog post to that. If not, it might still be useful or inspiring for helping you get rolling.

At the top of the router menu options, go to ‘System’ and then ‘Software’ and click the ‘update lists’ button.

This will pull all the possible packages you can install into your router from the community.

Before installing other packages, install package named “luci-app-ddns.”
It ‘seems’ that this also installs ddns-scripts when you install this which is another one you need so it’s nice it’s automatically installed with this package. Important Note: If you cannot find packages, or something is strange during package install, you may need to reboot your router to free up some RAM memory. This happened a few times and after rebooting the router I was then able to update the lists correctly.

Using the same method as the step above, Install the No-IP package for OpenWRT called “ddns-scripts_no-ip_com”

A tab called ‘Services’ should now appear at the top of your router’s menu options because you performed step 3 above. Verify this is good and if some problem, repeat the above steps until you have your tab and possibly you will need to reboot router (see important note above)

Under new ‘Services’ menu dropdown at top, “Dynamic DNS’ should now be an available option. Here is a link to some No-IP documentation for the client that I found useful. This link here in the ‘OpenWRT configuration’ section was also helpful to me for your reference although it wasn’t No-IP specific.

In the ‘add’ field at the bottom left, give your service a listing name (I used ‘Noip’ for mine) Then click ‘add’.

In the DDNS Service provider[IPv4] field, select “no-ip.com” from the dropdown list. Note: even though this is later in the order of fields, do this now.

Press ‘change provider’ button

For the ‘Lookup Hostname’ give it your No-IP custom URL without the “HTTPS://” stuff.

In the “Domain” field, put the same info from step 7 above.

username = your No-ip username (maybe your email?)

Password = you guessed it! Your password for the No-IP service

Under ‘Advanced Settings” I selected “https:// checkip .dyndns .com” from the “URL to detect[IPv4]” field. I found No-IP service wouldn’t work until I chose something from this list. It wouldn’t seem to point No-IP to my router without itâ€¦

‘Save and Apply’

At the top right you might (I can’t remember to be honest) see a notification that you have unsaved changes in your router. If so, go and apply those changes to your router.

Go back to overview list where you started. You should now see your new entry

Click the ‘enabled’ checkbox

Press ‘start’ button. You should now see a PID and a number with it and a red icon.

Now, you should be up and rolling and after No-IP has a bit of time to apply the changes your router should now be accessible by the URL you put in step 8 above.

The funny part about this blog is that I spent an entire day searching for how to do this and then I ended up landing on a blog post with the answerâ€¦ written by ME. in this 2015 blog post Lol or something?

This tutorial assumes you are using Ubuntu and know how to access your terminal and do some basic commands. If not, do a quick study on that before you begin. If you aren’t using Ubuntu on your computer I’m not sure what I can do to help other than encourage you to switch immediately.

This tutorial also assumes that your computer/laptop is plugged directly into the DIR-615 router by ethernet cable and not by wifi. It could probably be done with wifi, but I don’t know and I know it adds an extra layer of complexity I don’t like. So find a cable and plug in to do all this.

1. Download the appropriate image from OpenWRT to your computer.

2. Extract the file into it’s raw ‘.bin’ format.

Mine looks exactly as follows at the time of this writing when it’s sitting in my directory but as versions change and improve this could slightly change be aware:

lede-17.01.4-ar71xx-generic-dir-615-c1-squashfs-factory.bin

3. Using your terminal cd (change directory) to the location where the file is you just extracted in step 2.

4. Make sure your computer is set to a static IP address.

If you don’t know how to do this, search it online as I don’t have a quick link to it right now. “How to set static IP address in Ubuntu’ should find something. Make sure that your static IP address you are setting does not conflict with another device on the router, nor with the router itself at 192.168.0.1.

192.168.0.2 static

NOTE: After this router is flashed you will need to get rid of this static IP address since it won’t match your new router!

5. Pre-enter the following command into your terminal so you are ready to press enter

Again, the part after the @ symbol in the command above might change depending on the .bin file you are flashing on. This tutorial will likely get old at some point so you may need to swap out a different file name into the command above but the rest should work long term.

6. Power off the router by unplugging the black power cable

Warning. You are about to forever wipe your router’s ‘operating system’ so if you have anything in there you care about this would be the time to get those out!

7. Put pen in the reset button of router and hold it there

8. While still holding reset button, plug in the power cable.

Keep holding the reset button! Don’t let go. The light will be a solid colour (orange, I recall?) but you are waiting for the first flash before executing the next step.

9. As soon as the solid light starts to flash hit the enter key in your terminal and run the curl command you pre-entered in step 5 above

More notes for this step
The screen will stay with this html/> script on there and at this point you can keep your eyes on the router as nothing will happen on the screen.
You should see lights flashing and reboots. Wait, wait, wait. Failure seems real but it’s not yetâ€¦. For me I was stuck on a green light for a really long time and no updates in terminal.

If after 5 minutes (or so) things appear to be ‘stuck’ at that point you could try unplugging the power cable and plugging it back in again to test.

To test to see if it worked, go to the new access IP address which should be 192.168.1.1. If you are prompted for user/password you succeeded.

A few troubleshooting notes

Something didn’t work? Read these next few points for some inspiration:

Did you really make a static IP address in step 4? You might think you did but maybe it didn’t work. Check with ifconfig command and see what IP address your computer/laptop has. If it’s not static, things won’t work right.

Were you too fast or too slow with the timing of the curl command in Step 5? Timing is a bit finicky here so you may have to try a few times to nail it.

If things are really goofy you ‘may’ need to install the original Dlink .bin file and start from there. I doubt it but there are records of this online so I thought I would mention it. You could get this on there by finding this .bin file online and using your new curl skills from above to flash the original .bin on there first.

Nice long title. Thankfully the speed of getting your first big upload to your new Nextcloudpi (NCP) server won’t be so long, thanks to this tutorial! By spending 10 minutes and doing this tutorial you will be uploading 95% faster (that was my experience).

Assumptions Before Beginning

You have full 100% admin access to your NCP (ie. you are the master admin and probably created the server and installed it, or are close friends with the person who did)

You have SSH access to your NCP, and you know how to SSH into your NCP. If you don’tâ€¦ you’ll need to research that first.

1. Confirm the Username in NCP Who Will receive the Big File Shipment

This major upload will need to be associated with a username. In my case, I have created a ‘master-master user’ for this kind of reason. So I will be shipping this big upload to my ‘master-master user’ so that after it’s done that user can assign which files are to be shared with whom (and how). I think this is the right way to do it, even if you are the admin yourself. Topic is open to discussion, but that’s how I rollâ€¦

Make sure this user exists in NCP is the key point.

2. SSH into your NCP

NOTE! Apparently you can do steps 2, 3, and 4 via the NCP web admin so this means you might not need SSH, plus it might be easier. I won’t have a chance to test myself for a while but try that out first maybe! Otherwise, learn SSH and do the next few steps the way I write.

3. Setup Samba in NCP

sudo ncp-config

The first screen is informative and the ‘yes/no’ answers don’t make sense if you read it for grammatical sense. Just chose ‘yes’ which means “I understand that I have to force NCP to ‘scan’ the files when I’m done putting files on the box” This has now (Dec 2018) been fixed by the developers and it now says ‘I understand’ in the option box. Nice and thanks! You will see: ACTIVE: NO PASSWORD: ownyourbits

Type ‘yes’ (no quotes) overtop of ‘no’ in ‘active’ and type in a strong password. You will use this password later and probably you don’t want to give this to anyone else because if you do, that user can go in and mess with other people’s files (I think) Use the Tab key until you arrive at ‘yes’ and press ‘enter’

It should automatically create the ‘samba shares’ for each username you have already put into the system. This means that every user in your box can also access files on the cloud this way and not just with a nextcloud client user features. But the main point is that we’ll be able to move files quickly across the Local Area Network (LAN)

Once this part is done, press any key it will bring you back to your ncp-config screen.

Tab twice until you hit ‘finish’ and then press enter. That will bring you back to your terminal.

4. Do your Samba Shares (and I don’t mean the danceâ€¦.)

In this example I will be using Ubuntu desktop, so if you are using some other operating system – tough bananas – and you’ll have to search some other tutorial about how to connect your computer to your NCP using Samba.

First, open Nautilus (also called ‘Files” if you mouse-over it. The thing that lets you browser your files on your computer and looks like a file cabinet.

Next, go down to ‘Other Locations’ on the left panel and click it. In this case we want to use the LAN IP address because that’s the whole point of this exercse – fast transfer across LAN instead of going through the internetsâ€¦

As soon as you enter it in, assuming your box is on, it will find all those usenames and folders for them automatically. Double click the one you want to dump all the files into (probably your master-master admin account). The next part, although it seems easy – is not! But the reward is great so let’s do it.

I realized that what you need here for the username is indeed the NCP username but, but, but.. the password is the one you created in step 3 above! So tricky but alasâ€¦

5. “You like to Move it, Move it.”

Let’s move the files now. In Nautilus, middle mouse click wherever your main dump of files are. That will open up a new Nautilius tab from where you can drag, drop stuff into the other tab you just logged into. I just find this a nice and easy way but you can drag drop files there however you like.

Now, select everything you want to move and move them into your NCP user’s Nautilus tab.

Note: You should consider doing this piece by piece unlike me who tried to move 13 GB at a time. You don’t have an easy way to check the progress in this way so consider doing these moves small pieces at a time so you can see progress more easily.

While this is file move is happening, read on to the next section because you’ll have to tell NCP to scan the files when it’s done.

6. Scan the Files

After the move is completely finished from step __ above, in your Nextcloudpi web admin area, scroll down to the ‘nc-scan’ section and run it. It took much less time than I expected. It quickly scans all the files associated with all the users and (I guess) says ‘hey, there is a file here connected to this user’. After running the scan NCP is ready to roll.

7. Start your sharing

Log into the account you just put the files in and start sharing as you like and normally do.

We here at wayne(outthere) hope this made your day shiny and bright. Have a nice day.